maybe, just maybe
by Xmarksthespot
Summary: Maybe she was doing it wrong, this whole grievance thing. Maybe she was becoming a little insane for going to the barber and insisting he cut all her hair off. Maybe she was just hoping that everything that happened…never actually did. — Wal&Art, Spitfire


**Title**: maybe, just maybe  
**By**: Xmarksthespot  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own YJ  
**Notes**: OKAY OKAY, this is the last Endgame-Spitfire-related story I'll pop out. I know you guys are probably so annoyed by now, but I honestly had this written the day the episode came out; it just took me longer than necessary to post it.

**X-X-X-**

Maybe I should have spent a little more time crying, or tried shutting myself in my room for twenty two hours a day—spend a little less time outdoors. That seems to work a lot on TV. I should've tried to sell our dog but then take him back last minute because I couldn't bear the thought of letting go of something that we owned together. Maybe I should've broken a lamp or two, yell at the ceiling and go through all your old photos.

Maybe I'm not doing it right, this whole grievance thing.

I shouldn't be going back to our home and sleeping in our bed with a dry face and evened heartbeats. I shouldn't be humming to the song you danced to last month in the showers while using the showerhead as a microphone. I shouldn't be enrolling for another year at Stanford when I know you wouldn't be coming with me.

Maybe I'm insane.

Dick's gone through the whole cycle twice now, though he doesn't show it. He's back to step three where he's moping around in his apartment unsure of how to make of this. I think I caught him skipping to step five the other day and going through old home videos of you two together. I should've joined him, keep him company, but I don't think it would have helped him to hear me laugh at you two like that. Wally, you were an idiot back then; do you know that?

I see your parents often—they cook for me now. It's not that I can't cook for myself, but your mom seems to think that I'm in the same state as her and can't do anything properly anymore and she…Well she's overcooking everything. You haven't lived with her since we left for college three years ago and yet she's making dinner for six when there's only three. She thinks that we can all finish it in one sitting. Though I have to say, the leftovers are _amazing_. We should have taken cooking lessons from her instead of taking an introductory course last year at the community centre.

The team is cautious of me. No one knows how to react around the girl who just came back from the dead whose boyfriend is now dead. Funny, right? Maybe if I die again, you'll come back or something weird and creepy like that.

M'gann keeps crying too. Crying _for me_, because no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to do it like the first day I had to live without you taking a strip of bacon from my plate. And the hugs. The _hugs_. Wally, there are only so many hugs I can take in a lifetime without feeling suffocated. You know just as well as I do, I don't _do_ emotional sappy stuff. At least not with them, but you know that too, don't you?

You know that I'm trying…right?

I'm not taking a walk each day in the broad daylight because I don't miss you. I'm not buying from hotdog vendors at the town square and enjoying the sights because I've forgotten about you. I'm not pulling the doors to the barber shop _right now_ with the intention of getting a haircut because I want to cut you out of my life.

I do it because you're _dead_.

I do it because you're gone and you _didn't take me with you_.

Everyone here—_everyone_—can still walk down the streets and they won't know that _you_ let them live. I see them smile every time I go out, and it reminds me of you, and the way you used to pull a smile out of thin air, and it reminds me of _us_ when we were on the covert ops team and no citizen would know what we did for them, but we were still happy because we _saved the world_.

I don't want to stay inside our house and cry because you're gone.

I can't.

I want to let the wind blow through my newly cut hair. It's a bob cut, you know? You liked it when it was long so you could play and god forbid, _braid_ it, but I think you'd like this cut too. It's easy to run your fingers through it without getting knots in my hair and getting your fingers tangled in it like the last time you turned me into your Barbie.

And it's _fun_. I love running each morning because the wind tickles me like you used to, and I get to see everything I used to see while sitting on your back when you took us places.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm doing this wrong.

But how am I supposed to know if I am? I keep talking to you like this, but the truth is: you're dead.

You can't answer me.

.

* * *

**A/N: **This was definitely supposed to be longer, and should've focussed on Artemis's hair a lot more, but it totally ended up in a different direction. I still think she would look great with a shorter/bob cut, so maybe I'll write another story on that...Just you know, less focus on Endgame cause everyone must be getting tired of Spitfire angst at this point. Until then, please review!


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